Waitrose's personalised cool bags for pre-ordered turkeys, developed by Ultimate Group and featuring the customer's name, proved a popular packaging innovation among the supermarket chain’s shoppers over the Christmas period, packagingeurope.com and internationalsupermarketnews.com report.
Waitrose says that the bags are part of a broader project of ‘personalising’ the experience of shopping with the chain. Feedback has been very positive, and more developments within the theme of personalisation are in the company’s R&D pipeline.
Its packaging and reprographics manager, Karen Graley, said, “The personalised cool bags look superb, Ultimate Digital have really excelled and clearly demonstrated how digital print can be used in a totally different way by Waitrose. We were looking for a way to give our customers something extra to talk about this Christmas and to make them feel special.”
“With Ultimate Digital we are already developing further projects for 2016 using this new digital technology,” she added. “Personalisation, customisation, regionalisation and totally unique packaging all are now possible.”
Ultimate Group said, “We were delighted when Waitrose agreed to run with this project to demonstrate both the superb print quality and variable data capabilities of our wide web HP Indigo digital press. The Waitrose cool bag was designed to use the full 760mm width of the press and each individual named image was also store coded to allow Waitrose to distribute the finished bags to 280 stores.”
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
